


Sixteen Months

by squadrickchestopher



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, Angst and Feels, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bucky Barnes Has Nightmares, Feelings Realization, Graphic Description, M/M, Nightmares of war, One Night Stands, Paramedic Clint Barton, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, War Veteran Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-10
Updated: 2020-07-10
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:16:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25188559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/squadrickchestopher/pseuds/squadrickchestopher
Summary: There is a reason James doesn’t allow his dates to spend the night.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Clint Barton
Comments: 43
Kudos: 307
Collections: Bucky Barnes Bingo 2020





	Sixteen Months

**Author's Note:**

> Filling 3 prompts suggested to me on tumblr, plus my "coffee" square for CBBB and (loosely) my "barista" square for BBB.

There is a _reason_ James doesn’t allow his dates to spend the night.

He’s more than happy to pick guys up. More than happy to bring them back to his bed, take them apart piece by piece, make them yell his name loud enough to annoy the neighbors. More than happy to spend a few minutes snuggled up afterwards, blissed-out and happy and sated.

But they don’t stay. He’s never let them stay.

He tells himself it’s because he’s playing the game. He’s keeping his options open. Inviting them to stay the night might open doors he’s not ready for, might make them think he wants more than he’s willing to give right now. It’s a lie, but it’s better than the truth, so he tells it. And in the five years and dozens of one-night stands since getting out of the Navy, he’s never broken that rule. Not once.

He’s tempted to, sometimes, though. God, is he tempted.

Especially right now, when he’s all loose and languid and the most beautiful man he’s ever met is laying next to him, an arm thrown across his face as he pants his way back to reality.

“You alive over there?” James finally asks, rolling over.

“Nngh,” Clint says, which is pretty par for the course for him.

James chuckles and pokes his ribs. “That’s not a response, sweetheart.”

“Can’t move. Legs gone.”

“That’s how you know you did it right.” He pokes him again. “Want some water?”

“Nngh.”

“I’m gonna take that as a yes.” James gets up and goes to the kitchen, filling a glass of water. He stumbles more than once, his own legs admittedly a little wobbly as well. “Here you go.”

Clint extends one arm, hand open.

“You’re gonna have to sit up,” James says. “Remember last time?”

There’s a third “Nnngh” and then Clint sighs, moving his arm. “Fine.” He fumbles himself into some kind of half-sit, and tugs the glass from James’s hand. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” James stretches, popping his back. “How’re the wrists?” Clint holds one up. There’s markings, certainly, but nothing that’ll stay for too long. It’ll be a tender reminder for a day or two. “Good. You were pulling pretty hard, I was a little concerned.”

“I could tell by the way you were trying to kill me,” Clint says, his voice rough. He grins up at James, a lopsided, brilliant thing, and puts the glass on the nightstand before flopping back down into the bed. “Not that I’m complaining.”

“Ha.” James sits on his side of the bed. He’s exhausted already. It’s been a _long_ day, starting with a too-early shift at the coffee shop before moving to doctor’s appointments, and VA insurance arguments, and people poking and prodding at his prosthetic arm. He’d been planning on coming home, drinking at least three beers, and going straight to bed.

But then Clint had texted him in the afternoon and said, **have** **i got a wild hospital story for u,** which was followed by a picture of his face covered in band-aids.

**What the hell did you do???**

**can’t tell over txt. must b in person with dramatic hand gestures. dinner?**

**Drinks. Lots of them.**

**ur on. see u at 7, usual bar.**

It _had_ been a wild story, told over at least three fruity cocktails, and James was still laughing by the time they’d stumbled back to his place. He hadn’t meant to bring Clint home, but they’d been having fun, and Clint had looked good enough to eat so—

Well, one thing had led to another, and then this happened. Not that he’s complaining, either. Clint looks _fantastic_ when he’s coming apart under James’s hands. He doesn’t think he’ll ever get tired of the sight. They’ve been doing this steady hook-up thing for over a year now, ever since the day Clint walked into James’s coffee shop and spent an hour alternating between semi-obscene flirting and regaling James with his paramedic stories.

 _You’re making this shit up,_ James had said, passing him a second latte. _No way people are that stupid._

 _People are most certainly that stupid,_ Clint had assured him. _Want to hear more?_

_Definitely._

_Good. Dinner, tomorrow night, eight pm. I’ll pick you up here._ He’d looked James up and down, then added, _Wear those jeans. I want to see how they look on my bedroom floor later._

And James—well, James likes straightforward more than just about anything else in a person, so he’d nodded and said, _Why don’t we skip the dinner and start there, then?_

That had startled a brilliant smile out of Clint, bright as a sunbeam. _Works for me_ , he’d said, and they’ve been hooking up ever since. Not dating, just sleeping together. James was very firm on that in the beginning.

He does think about it. Doing more. He’s not really seeing anyone else, and he’s pretty sure Clint’s not either, and James sometimes catches himself wondering what it would be like to kiss him outside of a bedroom, or to take him out on a date without sex being the end goal.

But then he comes back to his senses. It’s a fantasy—a nice one, sure, but not realistic. James is too much of a mess to be dating anybody, and if Clint wanted to date someone, he could do a lot better than a traumatized, half-broken, ex-Navy medic.

He groans and curls into the pillows. “Gonna sleep for the next year,” he informs Clint, eyes already closing.

“Sounds good,” Clint says, voice as sleepy as Bucky’s. “I’ll leave when my legs come back.”

Bucky clumsily pats his arm. “Lock the door behind you.”

“Mmhm.”

Bucky lets the exhaustion take him, still feeling warm and happy from their earlier activities. Maybe it’ll be a good night tonight, maybe he won’t have any nightmares—

_She is on her back, coughing up blood. James gently rolls her onto her side to reveal a massive wound on her ribcage. She won’t survive it. She never does. But he tells her she’ll be fine, gives her the standard field medicine, and calls in for backup. They precariously airlift her out and he refuses to join. There are more to save. He can save them._

_He straightens broken limbs and plugs gaping wounds and holds the hands of dying, screaming soldiers who just want to see their mothers one last time. There’s no end to the bodies, to the carnage and death. For every one he manages to save, two more take their place._

_And then it is his turn. A bright flash of light that fills his vision, a searing pain in his left arm, and the metallic taste of his own blood in his mouth. A scream rips from him, shredding his voice, filling his eardrums with the sound of his own agony._

_“James!” someone yells, hands gripping his shoulder, and James thrashes, strikes out—_

“JAMES!”

James comes awake in an instant, cutting off his scream with a strangled noise. His hand is wrapped around someone’s wrist, but that’s not right, he’s supposed be _alone_ , no one else should be here, no one else is _allowed_ to be here—

“Let go,” Clint says, voice colored with pain. “Please?”

James stares at him, then at the way his metal fingers are bending Clint’s wrist back, and immediately he lets go. “Clint,” he says. “Clint—what—what are you doing here? Why are you here?”

“I fell asleep,” Clint says, massaging his wrist. “I didn’t mean to, I’m sorry. I know you don’t want me spending the night.” _And now I can see why_ is left unsaid, but James hears it anyway. “You were having a nightmare, I think, and I tried to wake you up. Are you okay?”

“I hurt you,” James says, staring at his wrist. “I...”

“It’s fine.” Clint drops his arm. “I shouldn’t have tried to shake you. That was stupid.” He looks at James, concern on his face visible even in the dark room. “You’re trembling.” He reaches over for a blanket and wraps it tightly around James’s shoulders. “Hey. Talk to me, please?”

“You have to leave,” James says, sounding more broken than he’d like.

“James—”

“You have to leave right _now_ ,” James insists. “Go.”

He can’t do this. He can’t do soft touches and quiet voices, not now. He feels so fragile, like he might shatter into a million pieces no matter how carefully Clint handles him, and he doesn’t want Clint to see that. He’s already seen too much as it is, and there are the outlines of fingerprints on his arm to prove it.

Shame floods him, hot and choking. There is a _reason_ James doesn’t allow people to spend the night, and this is it.

“Go,” he says again, hating how his voice cracks on the word.

There’s a long pause, and then a quiet, “Okay.”

Clint gets up and stretches, miles of tanned skin on display. Then he digs around and finds his boxers—the ridiculous ones with the emojis on them, the ones that make James laugh every time—and slides them on. He has to retrieve his shirt from the ceiling fan, and his jeans from somewhere in the tangled mess of sheets, but he does it all with a quick efficiency, never saying a word.

His face is blank the whole time, too, and somehow that’s _worse_. James would almost prefer it if he yelled, or looked upset.

 _Stay_ , James wants to say. _Please stay._

The words are pushing at his chest, making it ache, but he clamps down on them. Keeps his mouth shut. He doesn’t deserve Clint’s presence. Not right now. Not after that.

Clint pulls his purple hoodie over his head and turns to look at James. The air between them is thick with tension, and for a moment Clint looks like he’s going to say something—

But then he shakes his head and turns away, and James feels something inside him crack a little at the sight.

“I—” he starts, but he doesn’t know what to follow it with.

Clint pauses in the doorway, waiting.

“Just go,” James says, defeated.

Clint looks at him, the blankness traded for something else that James can’t read. “Okay,” he says again, and then he goes.

* * *

James doesn’t go back to sleep. He never has been able to, not after a nightmare, and he especially can’t now. Every time he blinks, he sees his metal fingers wrapped around Clint’s wrist, hears the little gasp of pain and the shocked way he’d said James’s name—

James rubs his eyes hard enough to see sparks, but it doesn’t help. It never helps.

“Fuck,” he mutters, and gets dressed. It’s too early to drink, so he starts cleaning. Digs out the supplies from his little hall closet and sets to work scrubbing the floor of the kitchen. It doesn’t need it, but he learned long ago that the best way to combat his nightmares is by occupying his hands. If he didn’t have another appointment tomorrow, he’d take his gun and go to the range upstate. Spend a weekend shooting things, pouring his anger into targets instead of himself.

But he can’t do that, so he settles for this, losing himself in the mindless repetition of it. Anything is better than thinking about what happened. Or what’s going to happen. Or if Clint’s going to come back.

 _Probably not,_ he thinks, scrubbing harder. _I wouldn’t._

Morning bleeds into the afternoon. James keeps working until the apartment is sparkling, and the laundry is done, and the dishes are cleaned and put away. He cleans out the pantry, alphabetizes his books, and then, out of slight desperation to keep busy, goes so far as to reorganize his sock drawer.

Soon enough, though, there is nothing else to do. But that sick feeling in his stomach is still there, the ever-present sense of self-loathing rearing its ugly head. James scowls around his clean apartment and tries to think of anything else that needs fixing, anything that he can—

There’s a knock on the door. “Hey, it’s me. You in there?”

James stares at it for a moment, sure he didn’t hear that correctly. There’s no way Clint would be coming back, not after _that—_

Another knock. “James? I brought coffee.”

James swallows hard, then reaches for the door. His fingers are numb, and he forces his hand to close around the knob, then pull it open. 

“Hey,” Clint says. He’s still wearing the purple hoodie and jeans from this morning. Still has the bandages on his face, although there’s a new one on his right thumb now, too. He smiles and raises a coffee cup in James’s direction. “Can I come in, or...”

“Sure,” James says after a moment, still a little shocked. He steps back and Clint walks in like he owns the place, all confidence and easy strides. He sets the cups down on the table. “Are those from my shop?”

“Yeah,” he says, turning to face James. “Not as good as when you make them, though. Anyway, we should talk...” He trails off. “You alright over there?”

“Fine,” James says, schooling his face back into neutrality. “I’m...I’m fine.”

Clint studies him for a moment, then says, “You weren’t expecting to see me again, were you?”

“Wouldn’t have blamed you,” James murmurs, trying for casual and not making it. “Not after this morning.”

He doesn’t know what response he’s expecting from that, but it’s certainly not for Clint to start snickering. James tilts his head, confusion warring against the anxiety for a moment. “What’s so funny?”

Clint raises an eyebrow. “You know how long you and I have been seeing each other?”

“We’re not dating—”

“Sixteen months,” Clint says. “Sixteen months we’ve been doing this.” He takes a drink of his coffee. “You realize that you’re officially my longest...anything?”

“Clint—” James stops, rubs his chin. “Sixteen months? Really?”

He hadn’t realized it had been that long, but then again, he hasn’t really been keeping track either. Time slips for him sometimes, lost in a haze of doctor’s appointments and trips to Stark Industries to have his arm looked at, and endless shifts at the coffee shop. Whole months can pass without him noticing.

Case in point.

“Wow,” he says. “Sixteen...wow.”

Maybe they are dating, at this point. Does a string of continued hook-ups count as dating?

“So yeah,” Clint says, setting his cup down. “Of course I was going to come back.” He reaches up and brushes his hair back. The sleeve of his hoodie drifts back, revealing something wrapped tightly around his wrist.

James gestures to it. “Is that from—” He can’t quite finish the sentence.

“Huh?” Clint looks at it. “Oh, no. I stressed it doing a handstand. It’s fine, I’m just wrapping it for some support.”

That startles a laugh out of James. “Why were you doing a handstand?”

“Showing off, mostly. I was doing a shift at the dog shelter this morning, and Wanda bet me ten bucks that I couldn’t walk the length of the hallway on my hands.” He grins. “I’m rich now, by the way. Coffees are on me.”

James shakes his head. “You’re ridiculous.”

“I try.” Clint sips his coffee. “So. Let’s talk.”

“There’s nothing to talk about.”

“Nope. Try again, James.”

“There’s nothing I _want_ to talk about, then.”

Clint studies him for a second, then says, “Do you want me to stop?”

“Stop what?”

“Stop coming over. Stop sleeping with you.”

The words are like a sucker punch to the gut, painful and sudden. The thought of cutting this off, of not seeing Clint again—it _hurts_. He’s gotten used to this. Used to the coffees, and the jokes, and sharing Clint’s ridiculous stories over fruity drinks. He doesn’t want to lose it.

“No,” he says. “No, I want you to keep—I want this.”

“Good,” Clint says, and something seems to relax in him. “Okay. Good. Then first things first—” He steps forward and wraps his arms around James, pulling him into a hug.

“What—” James starts.

“Shush. Let it happen,” Clint says, and James finds himself melting into it, letting his head rest on Clint’s shoulder. He’s not really a hugging kind of guy, but Clint’s always had a knack for knowing when he needs one.

“It was just a dream, James,” Clint murmurs, rubbing his back. “That’s all it was. I know you didn’t mean to hurt me. I shouldn’t have tried to wake you up like that, and I’m sorry.”

“It wasn’t your—I hurt you—”

“Buddy, I hurt myself on a regular basis. That was barely even a blip on the radar.” Clint pats him one more time, then lets go. “Okay?”

“Okay,” James says, although he’s not entirely sure he believes it.

Clint raises an eyebrow, but doesn’t comment. Just pushes one of the coffees towards James. “Drink this.”

James picks it up. “Thank you.”

They sit down at the table. James doesn’t know what to say. He’s already apologized, and he gets the feeling that Clint doesn’t want to hear it again. So he just takes a drink and waits.

“So,” Clint eventually says. “Nightmares.”

James looks at the table. “Yeah.”

“About the war?”

“Yeah.”

“And your arm?”

He clenches the metal fingers into a fist. “Usually.”

“That’s why you never let me stay over before? You were afraid of waking up and hurting me?”

“I _did_ wake up and hurt you.”

Clint waves a hand. “Because I tried to shake you awake. Which admittedly, was not my smartest move.” He shrugs. “I have nightmares too. I should’ve known better.”

“That doesn’t excuse—”

“It’s not an excuse, James. It’s just stating a fact.” He turns the coffee in his hands. “I’m just saying. Is that the only reason?”

“Yeah,” James admits, and he’s surprised again as a look of relief passes over Clint’s face. “Did you think it was something else?”

“Wondered sometimes,” Clint says, shrugging one shoulder. He sounds casual, but James can read past it to the worry underneath. “We started this based on one thing, you know? And I’d get it if that’s all you wanted. That’s fine. It’s not like we’ve ever sat down and had a conversation about it.”

James rubs his thumb over the logo on the coffee mug. “I’m not good at those conversations,” he says quietly.

“I’m not either,” Clint says, and he laughs a little. “And that’s how we ended up here, I think.”

“That’s probably true.”

Clint nods. “Look. I get that you’ve got issues. You’re not the only one who’s a complete mess of a person.” He gestures to the cup. “Look at me, man. I’m basically held together by caffeine and wishful thinking at this point.”

“But you—”

“The point is,” Clint interrupts, “we’ve got sixteen months of a thing sitting between us, and I don’t think we should throw that away because you had a nightmare.” He leans forward. “I _like_ you, James. I like you a lot. I should’ve told you this a long time ago, and for what it’s worth, I’m sorry I didn’t.” He reaches out and puts his hand on James’s. “But I’m telling you now—whatever this is? I don’t want to let it go. I know you didn’t mean to grab me. I’m not mad about it. I get nightmares too. Shit happens. But I _like_ you, and I want to stick around.”

He throws back the rest of his coffee and adds, “If you’ll have me, anyway.” He smiles, but there’s a hesitancy to his words, like he thinks for a moment James really might not want him after all.

James blinks. “Of course I want you,” he says, something like hope uncurling in his chest. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“Caffeine and wishful thinking,” Clint says. “I’m a bit of a mess, remember?”

“You’re amazing,” James says. “You—you’re funny, and you’re hot as hell, and you’re the most compassionate guy I’ve ever known in my life.” He gestures to himself. “Besides, have you _met_ me? Not like I’m a prize.”

Clint tilts his head. “I’d disagree,” he says after a moment. “You’re pretty incredible yourself.”

James wants to argue, wants to point to his arm as Exhibit A, and his nightmares as Exhibit B, but there is _something_ in the way Clint is looking at him. Something more than just the casual glances they give each other, and he thinks Clint might actually mean it when he says that.

Clint smiles, the lopsided one that James has always liked best. “I wouldn’t give it up for just anyone, you know? I’ve got high standards. I’m a classy guy.”

“You ate pizza out of a trash can once,” James points out, gratefully seizing onto the joke to help break the tension. 

“We all have our flaws.” Clint squeezes his hand. “So...we agree?”

“Agree?”

“That we’re trying this. You and me. Seeing if we can make it work as an official couple.”

“Oh.” James nods. “Yeah.”

“Good.” Clint straightens up. “So. First official date, then. Want to go get breakfast?”

James looks at the clock. “Clint, it’s four in the afternoon.”

“There’s never a wrong time for pancakes.”

“I think I have a better idea,” James says getting to his feet. He’s grinning, he knows, the happiness in his chest spilling over to the outside. It must be infectious, because Clint grins back at him, leaning back into his chair and sprawling out, looking lazy and beautiful and content.

“I’m listening,” he drawls, clasping his hands behind his head.

“It doesn’t involve much talking,” James says. He wraps his metal hand in the front of Clint’s hoodie. “Mostly kissing, and seeing how many times I can get you to say my name. Possibly something else you can do with your mouth, if you’re interested.”

“I’m _very_ interested,” Clint says, and he leans forward.


End file.
